Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - The Greatest Censorship Fails
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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Thank goodness somebody else brings this up! It's one of the censorship instances that haunts me periodically online because someone will pop up in a discussion asking about the painting. VIZ went farther than just the painting with it though. There were several dialogue changes and other art edits over a headpiece looking like a crown of thorns and a drawing of Michaelangelo's pieta. The religious obfuscation would all be terribly ironic in a series called Godchild if it didn't sort of kill the climax and affect that story's theme a bit. Being acutely aware of the "culture wars" though I can't beat up VIZ terribly over the concern regarding the painting. It portrays a very blasphemously offensive idea. It's one of my favorite stories for the series though. I very much wish there was a good reference for censorship issues. So many times I've seen inaccurate things make their way around the internet. People have said series weren't censored (Godchild) or pointed out "changes" that actually aren't true if you look at the original. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14766 |
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Well, they blaspheme Shinto and Buddhism all the time. Y'know what I'd like them to blaspheme though? The Japanese monarchy. Noitamina should make an anime out of it! So many punchlines! 
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tasogarenootome
 Posts: 593 |
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Very interesting read, thanks Jason!
This is one of the downsides of manga being a visual medium. Someone brought up the fact of novels being allowed to depict things far worse and it really does boil down to visibility. Going into a library and flipping open a manga to a page with nudity or violence while never being aware of the content a few shelves down is pretty understandable. When I was tutoring Japanese in public school, it was this that made building our Japanese-language manga library so hard. Even children's manga have so much "objectionable content" and we couldn't take the risk (see the Dragonball manga incident that happened in a library in Maryland a few years back!). Thank goodness for Chi's Sweet Home~! |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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I'm pretty sure there are some Christians who think something as inoffensive as Saint Young Men is blasphemous. But I bet if this would not be a problem if it were not VIZ. See Dark Horse and Blade of the Immortal for example. In fact, it seems less of a problem with original western content--see Alan Moore, despite getting into "trouble" at schools and libraries as highlighted by CBLDF from time to time. They are a much more resilient to criticism than Viz or Japanese controlled companies who paranoid about reputation, saving face and wrong ideas about sales. Thank goodness there are some mangaka like Oda who will put their foot down and demand some fidelity like the article mentions, but that is still rare.
Well, anime is an even more visual medium and a much larger business in the US and does not face the same issue nowadays. But I can see your point about school libraries. Still, American comic authors and publishers other than Viz don't seem anywhere as perturbed by controversy. |
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GVman
 Posts: 729 |
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I may just be reading it wrong, but are you saying Viz removed the manji from Neji's forehead in their release of the manga or are you saying that Shueisha later went and retroactively removed the manji from the manga in Japan (or is that just referring to One Piece)? If it's the former, you're either wrong or Viz did this recently; my copies of the Viz Naruto graphic novels have the forehead manji in them.
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RestLessone
 Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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I think VIZ removed it in the magazine Shonen Jump version, then added it to the manga with a note about what it meant. Memory is a bit fuzzy. |
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Petrea Mitchell
Posts: 438 Location: Near Portland, OR |
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This has kicked loose a memory of the funniest anime censorship moment I've ever seen. I watched the first half of R.O.D the TV on TechTV before getting the whole thing on DVD. There's a scene in episode 12 (IIRC) where a woman exploring a cave system finds that there is a small underground lake surrounding the artifact she's after, so she casually flings off her blouse and jumps into the water to swim to the center, to the obvious discomfort of her male bodyguard.
So, for the close-up shot of her doing the backstroke across the lake, TechTV blurred out her chest. The funny part is that as this shot happens, the woman is chiding the bodyguard for his prudish American attitude. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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I think Animax Asia cut that scene entirely. They also cut out the sexually suggestive stills with the Japanese opening credit titles. Until I got the DVDs I thought they had used the text-less version of the opening animation for some reason (they usually leave the OP/ED credits in Japanese). At least they used the excellent Geneon dub. |
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GVman
Posts: 729 |
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Ah. I guess Viz censored stuff more in the magazine than in the graphic novels? |
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Penguin_Factory
 Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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I love how snarky Jason is in parts of this. Made me laugh
Recently started reading Narutaru. When I got to the end of the volumes Dark Horse published I was like "I wonder why they never put out the rest of this?". Then I looked at some fan translations. "Oh. That's why." |
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Gyt Kaliba
 Posts: 712 Location: Arkansas |
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Yup, there was a pretty good amount of stuff censored in the magazine version that you could get uncut (or at least closer to it) in the actual graphic novels. I guess they figured that the magazine would be one thing, that any kid could get their parents to buy them a subscription to, but actually getting the graphic novels was something the young kids probably weren't gonna do. Or something. |
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trilaan
 Posts: 1055 Location: Texas |
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This is why I prefer to read fiction written by non-human species in their original languages. There's just too many hang-ups with Earth licensing.
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GVman
Posts: 729 |
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Huh. I wonder if a lot of the stuff mentioned in the article didn't make it into the graphic novels? |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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For Viz, it's still the case. You would think the ones with a "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" label in the front would be uncensored, but apparently not, as others mentioned earlier with Godchild vol. 4 The series as a whole is still rated "T" by Viz, so maybe that's why, since their other GNs are also censored or edited. I had assumed their M series, all of which comes with the same Parental Advisory sticker as that example, are uncensored... but with Viz, I am not so sure. Maybe the only way to know if it's uncensored for sure is if they explicitly say so, in their press release or marketing, like with Tenjo Tenge For other publishers, like Dark Horse (e.g. Blade of the Immortal), Seven Seas (e.g. Vampire Bund), Yen Press, or the DMP imprints, I am not aware of it happening. Interestingly, Dark Horse and Seven Seas don't sully the front covers with warning labels either. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14766 |
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Or even late-night TV anime sometimes still censored while the Bluray/DVDs are uncut too. |
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(which makes it worst but this is Godchild we are talking about 
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